Who Will Direct Brad Pitt in 'Moneyball'?

It's the ninth inning, two outs and the bases are loaded. The famous starting pitcher has been sent to the showers. Brad Pitt is the catcher and is waiting on the mound with the manager, who is calling for the ace reliever to save the game. And his name is Bennett Miller.

Steven Soderbergh was three days from the start of filming on true-life underdog baseball flick Moneyball when he was unexpectedly yanked from the director's chair by Columbia Pictures head honcho Amy Pascal. She didn't like the latest script revisions, so Aaron Sorkin was hired to make sureMoneyball takes a more mainstream, less documentary approach than what Soderbergh evidently had in mind. To complete the task, Variety reports that Columbia is now ready to put the ball in the hands of experienced mainstream director Bennett Miller ... whoops, that's not right.

Miller may not be well-known, but he directed the critically-acclaimed, true-life Capote four years ago, so maybe the studio feels that he has an affinity for the genre. Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Academy Award for his performance in that film, and Miller was nominated, so, again, that speaks to his ability to work with actors. Capote was a very good picture, in part because Miller took a measured, low-key approach. Will that work with Moneyball? In the best of all possible worlds for Columbia, Moneyball, based on a non-fiction sports book by Michael Lewis, will follow the audience-pleasing, financial successful path of another movie based on a non-fiction sports book by Michael Lewis: The Blind Side.